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Census Bureau closes doors to applicants after first round
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Published: February 4, 2009
Overwhelmed by job seekers, the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday stopped taking applications in the Carolinas and three other states for the first round of hiring for the 2010 census.
The agency does not expect to reopen hiring until this fall, when it will need census takers for the once-a-decade count, said Tony Jones, a spokesman for the Charlotte Regional Census Center, which covers the Carolinas, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Since November, the regional center has received more than 100,000 applications for 15,000 jobs. In North Carolina, more than 22,000 people applied for 5,000 jobs, Jones said. South Carolina had more than 14,000 applications for up to 2,200 positions.
And in the 12-county Charlotte area, more than 8,100 people sought 1,000 jobs.
"We have stopped taking job applications as of today because we do not want to hold out the promise of employment when it might not materialize," Charlotte regional center Director William Hatcher said in a statement.
By week's end, nine of 12 census regions around the country are expected to close their initial hiring, Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner said.
The agency met its recruiting goals in half the expected time, he added. Most of the early work, set to take place this spring, involves full- and part-time canvassing in neighborhoods to verify addresses where census forms will be sent.
Buckner said he did not know whether this was the first time the agency has had to stop taking job applications.
In addition to students, retirees and homemakers who traditionally help fill the census job ranks, the Charlotte regional center reported seeing professionals from banking, real estate and other industries looking for jobs now.
The move comes as unemployment rates in the Carolinas are at the highest levels since 1983.
The deluge of applicants will likely go beyond people who have lost jobs or who can't make ends meet with part-time work, said James Johnson, who runs the Urban Investment Strategies Center at UNC Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School. He expects people who anticipate job cuts from their companies.
He cited, for instance, Bank of America's plans to slash 35,000 jobs over the next three years.
"You've got to be crazy to sit around and not try to find something," Johnson said.
Government jobs in general have proved to be a lure for people in the recession.
Census jobs are attractive because of the pay and flexible hours. Hourly pay rates in the Charlotte area range from $13.75 to $21.25.
The area covers Anson, Cabarrus, Cleveland, Gaston, Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Montgomery, Polk, Rutherford, Rowan, Stanly and Union counties.
The Census Bureau will seek a lot more help with next year's count when it starts to hire about 1.2 million nationwide late this year, Buckner said. Those workers will go door to door collecting confidential information from people who have not returned census forms by mail.
Census counts determine states' congressional representation and factor in to how federal funds are spent locally and statewide.
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